Aimster in detail

Posted on June 5, 2003 by Lessig

This is a nicely detailed review of the Aimster argument by a Chicago attorney.

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2 Responses to Aimster in detail

  1. Anonymous says:
    June 6, 2003 at 7:25 am

    I’ve listened to the .mp3 of the arguments, but I haven’t read the briefs. That being said, if I was Mr. Deep I would contemplate suing my own lawyer for negligence.

    It seems to me that Mr. Deep’s council made two very serious errors:

    – He failed to provide evidence of substantial noninfringing uses in the brief, and furthermore, could not even cite an example during the arguments.

    – He obviously hadn’t taken the time to go through the Aimster tutorial or even briefly familiarize himself with the functions of the program.

    I’m on the side of the EFF, and I have even been very involved in the latest SDMCA legislation in TN. However after hearing those arguments I can’t say that I would rule in Aimster’s favor either. It seems that Mr. Deep’s Council not only failed to convince the court of non-infringing uses, but seemed to further convince them that Aimster’s interface and advertising were designed to leverage the trading of copyrighted songs.

    Now I am not a lawyer (yet), but if I am missing something will someone please correct me?

  2. Anonymous says:
    June 12, 2003 at 4:14 pm

    One sort of interesting sidenote, “Anonymous” (if that is your real name), of probably minimal relevance to the big picture, is the astounding level of technological ignorance often exhibited by the judiciary, Congress, the content distributors like the RIAA, and perhaps even Aimster’s lawyer.

    I’ve often been downright shocked at this; not that, say, a federal judge may be a tad ignorant, but that he would not be able to find expert witness to advise him (as, if I’m not mistaken, Proffessor Lessig did during the MS anti-trust trial).

    Take, for example, the DeCSS trial. The obvious ludicrousness of saying that code is not protected speech (please correct me if I’m wrong on the ruling) apparently went unnoticed. The extention of this seems to be that, for example, I cannot export from the country a mathematical formula describing the RSA algorithm? Or can I do so so long as its not actual code? In which case, the ban on code itself does very little good so long as a decent programmer exists outside the country to reassemble the formula into code.

    For that matter, look at the RIAA. A company which for one seems to be unable to even hire a decent IT consultant and can rarely go for more than a month without its website being defaced by juvenile kids. Even being as large a target as it is, shouldn’t the RIAA be able to find someone with a tad bit more computer know-how? (My suspicion on this was actually that they love playing the victim so much that they may not really mind.)

    For that matter, how come the RIAA never thought to do what Apple is doing with their online music store? Someone asked something similar to this on the PBS NewsHour; the RIAA rep’s response was less than enlightening. There is absolutely nothing at all novel about the Apple approach; forget expensive or complex copy protection, if people want to pirate your music they already can. Instead, focus on affordable, available online music, and those who want legal music will pay more than they pay for CDs. Amazing.

    So what possibly explains all this apparent technological ignorance? Well, number one, there really aren’t that many lawyers, judges, and lawmakers who understand first-hand the technology out there, apparently (present company excluded, of course). Second, in regard specifically to the RIAA, they have essentially a vested interest in simply not even pursuing new business plans, so long as they can prevent anyone else from doing so instead. And were they to offer music online without any fancy copy protection, regardless of the need or efficacy, they’d open themselves up to the accusation that they are allowing piracy as much as any of their victims, say, MP3.com.

    Perhaps intelligent legislation and rulings depend largely on more outspoken advocacy by those who do know what’s what, to essentially reeducate and tell the other side of the story to lawmakers. And perhaps in a few years, as more tech-saavy lawyers and lawmakers and judgesstart taking the current crop’s places, things will start to turn around. Then again, so long as corporations can essentially pay off lawmakers, maybe not.

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